


and you are wedded to calamity.

by rushvalleys



Category: Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity (Video Game), The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Alternate Timelines, F/M, Mutual Pining, Non-Linear Narrative, Post-Canon, Prophetic Dreams, coffeeshop au but make it an existential mess, kind of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:48:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28371153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rushvalleys/pseuds/rushvalleys
Summary: "It’s a tragedy,” the poet says with a glint in his eye. “So in one hundred years, it’ll age like fine wine into comedy, maybe.”“That’s not how tragedy works.” Zelda would know, because she is quite well-read on the subject of tragedy. “Stories are only called tragedies when the hero dies. You can’t turn one into a comedy. The hero won’t suddenly come alive after one hundred years dead.”“Ah, Your Highness,” The poet plucks a string on his harp. She hates the harp. The harp is now her least favorite instrument. “Is that really how it happens?”“What is your definition, then?”“Comedy,” he plucks another string, “is tragedy plus time.”In which:Zelda is stuck between a rock and a calamity, contemplates the nature of tragedy, and learns that even the Goddess cheats at cards.
Relationships: Link/Zelda (Legend of Zelda)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 86





	and you are wedded to calamity.

**Author's Note:**

> haha i am a recovering theatre major with depression so enjoy whatever this is
> 
> this was meant to be a one-shot, i’m currently planning on 3 chapters posted relatively quickly but absolutely not going to jinx myself.
> 
> cw for emetophobia in this chapter and probably canon-typical violence as the fic goes on.

> “Always your sword, my umbral sovereign; in life, in death, in anything beyond life or death that they want to throw at thee and me.”
> 
> **—Tamsyn Muir,** **_Harrow the Ninth_ **

> What we don’t expect
> 
> some god finds a way to make it happen.
> 
> So with this story.
> 
> **—Euripides,** **_Medea_ **

  
  
  


_PROLOGUE:_

**_somewhere within the belly of the beast._ **

_Picture this: there is a universe in which Princess Zelda is not a failure. Actually, there are probably thousands of them. There are approximately 9,302 timelines in which the calamity is not The Calamity. and there are 9,303 in which it is. Guess which wins out. Just guess._

_She flipped a coin 10,000 times for 10,000 years and on attempt 10,001, the only one that really counted, she came up empty._

_Also, picture that the punishment for being on the opposite side of a coin toss, the wrong edge of the darkness-sealing sword is one hundred years where your childhood home is not a home, but your judge, jury, and executioner. Also, Hylia is there sometimes to tell you what a job well done you didn’t do. That one is inexplicable. Zelda isn’t sure how she knows what Hylia’s face looks like up close or how her voice is soft and gentle and strong and harrowing all at once._

_Around her, Zelda’s home crumbles with disuse and floods with Malice. She can’t keep it all in. It’s not her fault, there’s simply too much for one girl to bear. There’s ten thousand years’ worth of tragedies she holds back with her palms. No. It is her fault, because she didn’t seal the darkness in time, because she couldn’t save the boy on the field until the last possible second, because ––_

_–– the point is, it’s hard to keep track of. Time and space don’t exist._

_The only three things in the world are herself, Ganon, and the chimes of the Goddess in her ear, repeating “is this how it happens?”_

_Is it? Time and space don’t exist until the boy on the field comes back with his sword._

  
  
  


PARADOS: 

**two days after the calamity’s end.**

“Hold still.”

The water in the basin is freezing as it crashes over her head.

“I feel ridiculous.”

“You helped me into a bathtub, I help you into one,” Link says. “We’re even.”

Zelda furrows her brow. She thought they wouldn’t talk about that yet.

“Quite an expensive bathtub you had,” Zelda says, trying her best to hide the cracks in her voice. “Do you know how much of our research budget went into it?”

She should feel some shame, sitting in her drenched, tattered prayer gown in Link’s bath as he washes the century-old grime out of her hair, but instead the whole thing feels somewhat ironic –– her most holy garment, privy to a baptism of sorts simply because she’s too weak to lift her arms. Her baptism back into the world of the living. 

She attempts to reach for her scalp and part her hair back in the middle, but her muscles don’t communicate with her brain and her fingers forget how to be fingers. Link moves her hand away as she struggles and parts it for her.

“There’s a Korok living there now.”

“Huh?”

“In the shrine,” Link says.

“Oh,” is all Zelda says. Then: “At least someone’s there to appreciate it, now that you’re a bath-owner.”

She earns another bucket of water to the head for that.

The idea of Link owning a home is nothing short of ludicrous to her. The Link of the past needed for nothing besides a warm meal and a cot to sleep on. A bedroll, if he was in a pinch, would do. The idea of him owning more than two or three shirts is bewildering to her. 

This is a fact she holds solid: Link is a rock at the bottom of the ocean. He has worn the same shirt for a century. He is the only constant she can rely on. 

A million lifetimes ago, Link had offered her his coat after she bathed in the freezing ritual waters of the Goddess’s Springs. Now she wears his too-short trousers and spare tunic as she falls back asleep in his bed. Hylia and Ganon whispered in her ear for a century, but they neglected to call her greedy. 

She sleeps a full day after Link deems her hair clean and untangled. Link lies in a nest of blankets beside her on the ground, because in this life and the next he is the Dutiful Knight To Princess Zelda, ready to fall on his sword and ruin his lumbar for her. 

The first two weeks back in her body are uneventful. She sleeps, sometimes for days at a time, and Link wakes her periodically to make sure she’s eaten. Which is another problem; the most that she can stomach for the first few days is salted broth and bread, if she’s lucky. 

It would be shameful, but she doesn’t have the luxury of shame. Not when she sleeps for days and only wakes when her dreams become too much or Link gets especially worried. She dreams of a too-warm sanctum, of staring down evil’s ugly head. Of Thunder and Water and Wind and Fire. Of Link and their friends. Of the Goddess.

See, she _saw_ from within the castle. But she’s not sure what she’s seen. Because she sees Impa as a young woman, barely older than herself, but then in a blink of an eye she’s pushing a hundred and twenty. She sees Link bleeding out onto Blatchery Plain, she sees him chopping vegetables downstairs. She sees herself shrouded in light and aiming holy arrows into evil incarnate, she sees herself sobbing into the holy waters of Mt. Lanayru. She remembers too much, so much that she’s not sure what of it is real and what was Ganon playing mind tricks on her as their consciousness bled into one another, at war with time and space and each other.

She remembers too much. Link remembers too little. They make quite a pair.

“Wasn’t there also a bed downstairs?” Zelda asks the first evening that Link helps her down the stairs to eat at the table. Link’s arm circling her shoulders reminds her he’s real. “I remember your sister’s against the staircase.”

“You – you’ve been here?”

Zelda blinks. “Is this not ––”

She’d guessed –– assumed, really –– this was his family home, one of the humble lofted spaces tucked away between the mountains that surround Hateno Village. Zelda has only been here once before, but she wanted so badly then, in the great Before, to know _more_ about him that she committed every detail to memory. 

“Your family home,” she continues. “I –– we were passing through Necluda once, and –– it made sense to stop in Hateno to restock ––”

“You mentioned my sister.” 

Zelda nods. “Aryll.”

Link’s face is unreadable, his eyes closing and nose wrinkling. Then he covers his face with his hands, bracing his elbows against the table.

“Aryll,” he repeats. He pauses, mulls the name over, sounding it out like it’s foreign to him. Then, with a sigh: “I told her I’d be home, didn’t I?”

“I ––” Zelda frowns. She doesn’t know what to say to that. She has no idea where to start piecing together what they both have lost. “I’m sorry. Were you two close?”

He frowns at her; no malice lies behind the expression, only frustration. “Maybe?”

Zelda rakes a fork through her plate –– a mushroom risotto, cooked in broth instead of cream and seasoned sparingly in hopes she’d be able to stomach it in its blandness. She’s able to take a few bites before a wave of nausea takes over. Good enough for now. 

“I’d like to help you remember,” Zelda offers. “It’s the least I can offer in return.”

“In return for…?”

She blinks up at him. Isn’t the answer obvious? “For saving me. And opening your home to me.” _For eating the world’s most flavorless mush of rice so I could sit at the table with you. For throwing out your back on the floor of your home, which you bought with your own money, so I could sleep in your bed._ The list could go on.

Link nods, halfway through a mouthful of risotto ––

“And since there’s no bed downstairs, you don’t need to sleep on the floor,” Zelda puts voice to her inner monologue, unthinking. “You helped me bathe. I don’t know what part of my modesty you think you’re preserving by refusing to share the bed.”

–– and promptly chokes on the mouthful, his face turning red. “I ––”

“Um –– unless it makes you uncomfortable,” Zelda finishes quickly. She’s sure her face is as flushed as his because it _burns_. “I didn’t mean to be so forward, I just –– I think you have sacrificed enough of your comfort for mine.” 

Link coughs through the mouthful. “I’m not sacrificing anything. I’ve slept in dirt. And if my comfort bothers you, I can have Bolson install another ––”

“I –– if it’s alright, could you just humor me?”

Link doesn’t answer. Of course he has to make things difficult. She’d almost avoided having to lay her soul bare to him yet again. She isn’t above begging. 

“Sometimes I wake up, and I forget you’re alive, and I –– please. If it’s alright.” She looks down at her hands. “It would make me feel less...unsettled.”

She worries that now that the pieces of the world have fallen in place, that Link and Zelda exist as one entity again instead of two distant dots on a map that he’ll fall back into old ways. The old ways, where she’ll speak right through him and he’ll do the noble, yet incorrect thing he thinks his duty calls for. 

His mouth presses into a straight line. “Do you feel unsettled?”

She nods. Then shakes her head. Then –– “I don’t know. I just feel.... _off_. Like I can’t keep track of what’s real and what’s not.” She winces. “I must sound crazy.”

“You can’t remember if I’m alive. I can’t remember my sister,” Link says with a grim smile. “If you’re crazy, I’m crazy.”

  
  
  


**_a collection of memories, at least one hundred years old._ **

_She’s five years old in her mother’s study. Her hands, pudgy but with the impressive control of a prodigy, paw at a wrench as she watches the Queen use an ancient screw to attach the last of Terrako’s legs._

_The guardian beeps and squirms under the Queen’s hand. Its bright blue eye glints at the two of them and, in its excitement, Terrako’s frenetic beeps turn to a melody, familiar and sweet._

_“My song,” Zelda says, eyes wide with wonder._

_Her mother nods. “I thought this would appeal to you more than a music box.” She kneels in front of Zelda, placing a hand on her shoulder. “I won’t always be around to wish you good night. Consider Terrako your friend for when you feel lonely, alright?”_

_Zelda frowns at that; a melancholy beyond her years, a centuries-deep ache fills her. She looks at her mother, so tall and strong and serene in front of her, and feels the uneasy stomach that portends a premonition. Such is the curse of a woman born to the Royal Family. There is sorrow in each happiness knowing – seeing – that there is a storm brewing somewhere in the distance._ _  
_ _Zelda isn’t sure what is putting her at unease, but she can’t seem to shake it off._

_Her mother pulls her into a hug, stroking her long, golden hair._

_“Oh, Little Bird,” her mother whispers. Zelda closes her eyes, and suddenly she sees a kingdom in mourning burned onto the backs of her eyelids. “Is that really how it happens?”_

_-_

_“Please don’t tell my father about the mud.” Zelda says at thirteen._

_She promised her father she would be on her best behavior during her visit to Gerudo Town — her first one all by herself, a birthday gift. She abides by that promise, really, she does. It’s just that she’s never seen that particular type of lizard at the castle, and she’s amazed cold-blooded reptiles can survive the desert, so she had to get an up-close look at it, even if that meant diving into a sandpit in the back of town. She’s nothing if not dedicated to her studies. Urbosa only offered a long-suffering sigh when she found Zelda, bought the princess her first pair of Gerudo silks to replace her soiled clothes, and offered to wash and braid her hair in her chamber._

_Urbosa only laughs as she brushes out the knots. “Of course not. I’d get an earful from him too, you know.”_

_-_

_She’s sixteen, seventeen in less than a month, but who’s counting. She sits on Urbosa’s floor in her Castle Town accommodations._

_It started with an itching underneath her skin that was never there before. It started with Daruk ribbing Cerdo the Blacksmith into giving Link a discount on fusing his new fancy sword with some weaker weapon to make the blade stronger. (“What,” Daruk asked, “no markdown for the Chosen One?”)_

_No, it started with Link pulling that darkness-sealing sword in her honor against a lunatic sorcerer in Korok Forest, when darkness-sealing is_ her _job. Now he’s a god among men. Link can climb Death Mountain with nothing more than a few baked apples and a metal shield to surf with on the way down. Link can fight a silver lynel one-handed. Link can walk on water. All Zelda has is a robotic egg and a slate on her hip._

_“It only means that boy would die for you,” Urbosa says, braiding a crown around her head. “Isn’t that all you can ask for from a knight attendant?”_

_Zelda frowns. She grimaces as Urbosa works a tangle out of her hair. “It’s not that simple.”_

_“Then explain it to me.” Urbosa is patient. She’s lightning in a bottle with the gentlest of hands. “How does it happen?”_

_She tenses her jaw. Impending end of the world be damned, she is not about to cry over the same spilled milk she’s cried over for the past ten years of training._

_“What does Hylia see in him, and not in me?” Zelda asks quietly. She tucks her knees to her chest. “What am I missing?”_

_Urbosa takes a moment to think. She tugs on a new section of Zelda’s half-braided hair and sections it beneath her fingers._

_“Hylia rewards an unbreakable spirit. Let’s look at it this way,” Urbosa says. “If you had one chance, and only one chance to save the thing you loved, wouldn’t you make yourself unbreakable to do so?”_

_“So...what? Do I not love my kingdom?”_

_It’s rhetorical, because she does and she doesn’t. She loves Hyrule –– the Sheikah’s ancient secrets, the women in Gerudo Town who dance in the plaza in the evenings, the lone Silent Princess on the field outside the castle. But its people don’t love her. They chide and belittle her in secret and fill her with pleasantries at ceremonies. They don’t believe in her. She doesn’t believe in herself._

_Terrako plays her melody, and it reminds her of her mother. Urbosa reminds her of her mother. She feels equal parts soothed and upset._

_“I think your kingdom has broken your spirit,” Urbosa places her hands on Zelda’s shoulders. “You grew up too fast, and they watched. You need to find another way in.”_

_“How? I’ve tried everything.”_

_“Well. Could you find a way to love him more than your kingdom?” Urbosa asks. Her hands work on Zelda’s braid again. “Maybe we won’t need to bury our friends this time around.”_

_“So…” She places the words carefully. She’s kept them close to her chest for so long. If not in this reality, then in another. Her right fist clutches involuntarily. “The fate of the world depends on me falling in love with my knight?”_

  
  
  
  


**interlude.**

When her mother fell sick, Zelda prayed. And at her mother’s funeral, she did not cry. Zelda –– all six years and three feet of her –– prayed once again.

All six years and three feet of Zelda begged at the foot of the Goddess’s statue that Hylia send her a kindness in the midst of her deepest sorrows, to bring back her mother, or at the very least send her a mentor with a compassionate ear to teach Zelda how to wield her most sacred duty. She prayed that her father would understand if and when she failed to instruct herself. She prayed that her father could understand her at all. 

Hylia, of course, ignored her. 

See, it’s not her fault she never figured out that love was the answer. Zelda had loved her mother plenty. If love were the key to unlocking her power, her childhood prayers would have worked. 

It’s not her fault she didn’t know. The world was never meant to end with her knight dying in her arms. 

Everyone in Hyrule must have figured out in one second what took her seventeen years to piece together. The details have been hushed by Impa and the rest of the Sheikah, but, come on. People are perceptive, and Hylians are a gossipy bunch. The Rumor Mill would eat up any story it could get its hands on about a lovelorn princess. That annoying court poet never sang of a princess defeating an ancient evil _just because_ . It was always a Hero, a Princess, and a bond. It was always something more, something _strong_ and unyielding. Always —

Better not to dwell on it now, Zelda decides. 

She wakes to the sweet smell of a breakfast of honeyed apples mixed with the stench of monster parts gone foul, and Zelda decides instead that maybe she should be the one responsible for making the elixirs from now on.

  
  
  
  


**one hundred years minus two weeks ago, carry the one, divide by one upended tragedy.**

_She sits at a banquet table, a runner of royal blue lining the table. She embroidered it that morning to match the Champions’ tunics, a hasty patchwork that honestly looks awful if she stares at it for too long, which she does, because she is unchanging and unflinching and wielding a nasty inferiority complex. But it’s the beginning after the end, so she’s forgiven._

_The world around her feels wrong. There’s no better way to put it than “wrong.” It feels like the room is slowly tilting to its right side, but maybe that’s just her, feeling unaccustomed to peace. Yeah, that’s it._

_Link to one side of her and Impa to the other can almost convince her that it’s fine. But Impa is young and Link doesn’t talk much on a good day; there’s even less for him to say to a table full of skeleton Champions._

_Zelda wants to laugh along with Daruk and Urbosa and the rest of them, really, she does. But this is —_

_“Is this how it’s happening?” Daruk bellows. Revali clicks his tongue. “The little guy saves the day with a pot lid, and you still think you can take him on solo?”_

_It was a Hylian Shield, actually. Not a pot lid. Zelda would know — she sealed the darkness behind him after he cut it in half with his sword. The pot lid came into play when he saved her from a rogue Guardian in front of her father, but –– no. That’s not right, either. He was already her knight when the pot lid ––_

_“So much for a celebration dinner,” Impa mutters under her breath. Terrako chimes underneath Zelda’s feet, pointing himself toward Link. “Can it, you glorified alarm clock.”_

_Zelda swats at her. “Impa!”_

_Link leans down and squints at the Guardian like they’re having a spirited conversation._

_“You can understand him?” Zelda asks._

_Link shrugs._ I guess.

_“Does he think you’ll win?”_

_“Well, that’s hardly fair!” Revali scoffs. “If you’re the only one who can understand that thing, clearly you’re going to have it end up on your side.” And then mutters something like, “asinine little children’s toy.”_

_Urbosa’s head is in her hand, like this is the dumbest conversation she has ever been involved in against her will. Daruk laughs harder._

_“Okay, fine,” Urbosa says. “Link. Revali. Gear up and get out on the training field. Let’s settle this once and for all with some target practice.”_

_The showdown only proves to frustrate everyone involved. Revali starts with a lead, which barely rattles Link, which rattles Revali to his core. Link makes two bullseyes from up in his paraglider, which puts him ahead of Revali, and Revali slams his bow down in frustration. The whole ordeal lasts maybe ten minutes._

_Daruk claps a hand on Revali’s shoulder, thrusting Revali forward and earning Daruk a scowl. “Cheer up, buddy. It’s just target practice.”_

_“And if the last week has taught us anything,” Urbosa offers, “it’s that there’s always someone younger and stronger you never saw coming. Well,” she considers, “older, in the case of the Rito.”_

_Daruk laughs in agreement. “I couldn’t believe it –– another Goron with Daruk’s Protection! Who would’ve thought?”_

_Zelda watches Link flip midair as he aims another arrow. Her stomach gurgles. The world turns a little more sideways._

_“But he’s not younger and better!” Revali grits his teeth. “He just has a fancy sword and deigns himself too good to talk to anyone other than the princess. And that infernal egg! How’s that for ‘better?’”_

_Link’s back down to earth. He smooths his hand over his bangs. He squints in Revali’s direction._

_No, she’s definitely going to throw up. The world is almost ninety degrees on its side._

_Revali, in his infinite frustration, answers by drawing his bow again at the target board in front of him. He misses spectacularly, because the world is toppled onto its side and gravity works in very reliable ways –– the arrow bends and dives right into Zelda’s trajectory, aimed straight for her heart._

_Instinct tells her to shield herself with her right hand forward. The arrow’s tip turns to golden light. The light from her own bow._

_She catches the light in her palm. The arrow dissolves ––_

_–– and Link is there, pushing Zelda out of the way. They both tumble to the ground. He leans over her, protective, his shield out and an arm bracing her side._

_“Uh ––” Zelda starts. She blinks. Clears her throat when she realizes that Link is almost on top of her. Stammers. “I — I’m fine, really. Thank you, Link.”_

_He sits back on his haunches, but he doesn’t look embarrassed about the proximity. Sworn duty and all that._ _  
_ _He takes a sudden fascination to her right hand; he takes her small hand in both of his. He flips it over; considers the marking. Zelda feels the calluses on his thumb. “It’s glowing.”_

_“Is it?” Impa leans over the two of them. “Fascinating. That’s just like ––”_

_Link nods._

_“Blatchery Plain. Her powers unlocked,” Impa muses._

_Zelda opens her mouth to protest. ‘No, that’s not what happened on Blatchery Plain. Well, yes, that’s what happened, but it was too late. Revali shouldn’t be here. Daruk shouldn’t be here. Urbosa, Mipha. Link.’ That’s not how it happened ––_

_She opens her mouth to speak. Instead, a black hole opens underneath her and pulls her heart into her stomach._

_She leans over and vomits onto the training field._

  
  
  


**three weeks after the calamity’s end.**

“This is always the worst part,” says Sophie, noting the crease in Zelda’s brow as she struggles to keep her arms up. She finishes and above the measuring tape into her pocket. “Next time, tell your boy to make you a fortified pumpkin for dinner the day before you get measured.”

“Oh, he’s not ––”

“She’s not a fan of pumpkin, if I remember correctly.” Link hands Sophie a bag of rupees, and she folds the clothes into a cotton tote.

“I don’t mind pumpkin,” Zelda says as they walk out. “I probably just told you that to skip dinner one night.”

Link snorts at that. He leads her up the hill back to his house, and Bolson teases him from next to the cookpot in a sing-songy voice for bringing a _lady_ over until the points of Link’s ears turn red.

He makes pumpkin for dinner that night, and Zelda eats nearly half of it.

Zelda makes her way up the hill to Purah’s research lab a few days later. The sun beats down on her back and her heart beats fast, body still frail from a century in suspension, but she has hundreds of questions about the Sheikah Slate, about the Shrines littering Hyrule, about the whispers in town about the “mysterious child” at the top of the hill. 

_(“Experiment gone wrong,” Link had explained, then added: “Or horribly right.”_

_“Some say youth is a virtue,” Zelda replied, neglecting to point out that they’ve both been seventeen for a while now.)_

But mostly, she wants answers about that strange little Guardian from her dreams.

The reunion is strange. Zelda finds she can’t say much at all, mouth agape at what Purah’s managed to do to herself, words stuck in her throat. When she finally does ask about the Guardian, Purah’s face twists into a frown.

“Nope,” Purah muses, “but this thing sure is cute –– I should take some inspiration! You said it played music, too?”

“Yes,” Zelda says. “The melody was programmed into him, I think.”

“Fascinating!” Purah stares at Zelda’s crude drawing of the Guardian. “If you’re not careful, next time you come up here I might have an eggy of my own. Need a better diagram, though. No offense.”

Zelda only groans in response.

She stops at the Goddess statue on her way back to Link’s home, bites her lip as she considers it. It’s funny, of everything to survive in the carnage of Calamity Ganon, a shrine to the very deity who could not prevent the ruin remains. 

Link grew up in Hateno. This she knows, but the reality of it escaped her until now.

How many times must he have passed the statue in his youth, running up and down the hills with his sister, or prayed here to the Goddess Hylia with his parents? Did he have any idea, any cloying familiarity scratching the back of his skull, that he’d become the sworn knight to the Goddess reincarnate? That she’d break the world, and he would have to piece it back together again, his friends and family dead and his memories lost to time?

She kneels at Hylia’s feet by rote. She stares the statue in the eye. She traces its necklace, so similar to the one that accompanied her prayer gown. Her most hated possession that lays ruined somewhere within the Sheikah Slate’s inventory — somehow she lacked the heart to throw it out.

She traces the indent of Hylia’s hair. Parted down the middle and as long as her ceramic body, similar to hers. Well — vice versa, really. She was made in Hylia’s image, after all. 

A weight falls on Zelda’s shoulder. “Princess?”  
“Link!” She yelps as she turns to face him. “What are you doing here?”

“You didn’t come back.” Link kicks up dirt with the side of his boot, avoiding her eyes. 

“I didn’t mean to worry you,” Zelda says. She glances back at the statue. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you I was praying, would you?”

He offers a small smile and tilts his head to the side. That’s a no.

She looks back to the statue, tracing the line of its hair with her eyes, head to torso.

“I need your help with something.”

Later, Link takes a small dagger out of the Sheikah Slate inventory. She sits in front of the washroom mirror as Link lifts her hair to the dagger.

“No Master Sword?”

“I didn’t fight Calamity Ganon to behead you weeks later.” Link gestures to the knife. “Ready?”  
Zelda takes a deep breath. “Be careful with it.”

“I cut my own hair all the time.”

“That’s not very reassuring.”

“I’ll remember to be offended when I’m not holding a knife to your head, Princess.” Link catches her hair on the edge of his knife, and it’s over. He holds long tendrils of golden hair in his fist, then discards it in the wastebin as he begins evening out the ends, cut just below the jaw.

Her eyes sting as she watches patches of gold hit the floor, but she does not cry. Instead she whispers, “Can I ask another favor?”

“Of course,” is his answer. 

“Don’t call me Princess anymore,” she says, because what’s a princess without a castle, anyway? “My kingdom is gone. Zelda is fine.”

And then, despite herself, a tear leaks out. And then: “Why did Hylia fail me?” And then, when Link doesn’t say anything: “Why, when if I had just awakened a day, a _minute_ earlier, if I could have just realized—“

“Zelda.”

“Did _I_ fail _her_?” 

“What?” Link blinks at her through the mirror. “No, you didn’t —“

“How would you know?” If Link didn’t have such a steady hand, she might have reservations about yelling at someone holding a knife to her neck. 

He shuffles back, mouth open and eyes wide. Before he can stumble through an apology, Zelda rubs at her eyes. 

When she opens them, she’s in her Hyrule Castle chambers. Link is behind her in the mirror, fussing his royal helm into place. She wears her ceremonial blues. She looks a year or two older, a bit world-weary, but _happy_ –– and isn’t that an unfamiliar concept.

She gasps. The vision is gone as suddenly as it appeared. She stares into the washroom mirror again, and she stares at a bewildered Zelda and a squinting Link.

In lieu of an apology, Zelda offers an explanation. “I was never allowed to cut it. In reverence to the Goddess, I had to look reminiscent of her. I don’t want to remind anyone of her anymore.”

“I never saw you that way,” Link answers. “If that helps.”

She bites back a smile. “And that’s why I always liked you.” The word _‘like’_ rests clumsily on her tongue, but a stronger word is too hard to say.

Link snorts. “‘Always’ is a stretch.”

“Well, I liked you when it counted.”

“I can’t imagine what would have happened if you didn’t,” Link says. “Hyrule in flames, all because the princess got fussy when she didn’t get to pick her knight.”

Zelda pouts. “According to Impa, I’ve been fussy all my life. You aren’t that special, hero.”

Link laughs. The stronger word burns a hole in her chest.

  
  
  
  


**ninety-eight years ago, maybe.**

_“I hate this tiara,” Zelda pouts into the mirror. “It pinches my forehead.”_

_Link grunts in response, only half listening. He shares the mirror to pin down his royal guard cap. Then he frowns because he’s dissatisfied with the way his hair falls underneath the cap, then takes it off and starts the process all over. And over. And over._

_“Let me do it,” Zelda says finally._

_She holds the helm in both hands, pins between her lips for convenience. In her heeled boot, she’s a comfortable couple of inches taller than him, so it’s easy to reach down and fit the hat to his head._

_“You had it right the first time. And the fifth. The eighth, too, if you had bothered to smooth out the hem,” she says through a mouthful of bobby pins. “I swear, you only do this to annoy me.”_

_When she squints at him, he adds, “I like the tiara.”_

_“Would you like to wear it?”_

_“No, I mean —“ It’s sweet, the way his cheeks turn pink. “You look nice.”_

_Zelda is the Princess of Hyrule with the blood of the Goddess, and a burgeoning scholar on top of all that. Superlative on top of superlative. And yet she’ll never be sharp enough to figure him out. Never be able to dig her fingers into the wrinkles in his brain and dissect which parts dictate when he should speak and for how long. It’s infuriating. The only constant is that he’s usually speaking to her, and that’s, well, less infuriating._

_She finds the right spot for the cap, where his bangs peek out the right amount and the sides of his hair aren’t squished underneath the hem. She begins to pin the hat down, but as one of Link’s hands moves to place a pin of his own, she notices his other has found its way to her waist. She snorts._

_“I’m starting to suspect you were perfectly capable of pinning this,” Zelda says. “You just wanted me to do it.”_

_Link pleads not guilty with a smile._

_“With absolutely no ulterior motives.”_

_Link smiles again –– it’s subdued, but practically a grin coming from him. The hand on his cap comes to the small of her back._

_She brushes a flyaway strand of hair off his face, careful not to knock the helm._

_Link turns his head to the chamber door. He eyes it, then his eyes are back on her, as if to ask:_ “you looking forward to it?”

_Zelda answers with a roll of her eyes and a long-suffering sigh._

_“You know how these parties go. If Impa isn’t pulling me in a thousand directions, my father is. And if he’s not, Urbosa finds a way to.” She settles her hand on his cheek. “I’ll save you a dance if I can.”_

_She knows how festivals go; Zelda will placate royals from other corners of the map she’s never met and Link will be bombarded with fans who haven’t read in the Rumor Mill yet that he’s quite taken with a certain princess. Or they’ve read it, and simply think it’s untrue, or don’t care. Those bastards._

_When Zelda feels the urge to frown, she bites her lip instead. A shame that she won’t see much of him, when the blues and golds of the royal uniform bring out the blue of his eyes so well. She’s always liked him in the royal uniform._

_And then, a pit in her stomach tells her if she doesn’t kiss him right this instant, she won’t ever get another chance to. Which does not feel like hyperbole, because she smells smoke and feels a trickle of blood run down her throat. Feels that uneasy stomach, bone-deep well of anxiety that forebodes something she can’t name. Like the edges of reality are fraying._

_So she kisses him, a little too desperate, too eager for what the situation calls for. Link stumbles backwards as he recenters his weight in order to kiss her back properly. She weaves a hand into his hair, but she’s met with resistance because of ––_

_“The cap!” Zelda yelps as she pulls away. “I forgot. Sorry.”_

_He laughs as he smooths a hand over the hat. His nose crinkles the way it only does when the laugh meets his eyes as well as his mouth. A miracle, that her thousands of past lives have led her to that laugh._

_Link looks into the mirror and tilts his head in consideration._

_“It looks nice,” Zelda says. And then says, earnestly: “You look nice.”_

_He stares up at her, a hand on her waist. She’s not sure what she expects him to say, but it’s not: “Is this how it ––”_

_“Princess!”_ _  
_ _The door flies open. Impa, dressed in her fineries and armed with the ferocity of a desert sandstorm, practically runs into Zelda’s room._

_She nods toward Link. “Link.” Then toward Terrako, sitting dormant in the corner. “Gremlin.” And when Zelda and Link don’t immediately separate from one another, glares at Link and says: “Don’t you dare get handsy with the princess tonight. We need today to go well.”_

_“Why?” Zelda asks. Link moves to sit on the bed, and Zelda joins him. “It’s hardly our holiest day, just a celebration of the fall harvest. Not even Father is too bothered about it.”_

_“But the Zora are coming, Your Highness –– “_

_“The Zora come every year, Impa.”_

_“ –– and if they’re not already up in arms about Vah Ruta not working, they’re definitely going to be sour that their princess’s chosen husband –– which, Link, I’ll save my many questions about that for later –– is on the arm of another kingdom’s princess ––”_

_Simultaneously, Link and Zelda try to interrupt:_

_“We weren’t ––”_

_“Vah Ruta’s not working?”_

_Impa hardly stops to breathe. “–– which, they’re not going to be too happy to see our very much alive princess anyway when theirs is very much not alive and half the Zora population remembers Link, and he doesn’t remember any of them...it’s going to be a whole ordeal.”_

_Zelda’s head is spinning. Someone is stabbing her right hand with an invisible dagger._

_“_ What _?”_

_“I’ll give you two, like, five minutes tops to get whatever…” Impa gestures to the two of them, “...this is out of your systems, and then we’re going out there.”_

_If Link is as bewildered as she is once Impa leaves, he doesn’t show it. He shrugs, as if to say,_ “typical Impa. _” And Link not reacting at all is all it takes for Zelda’s resolve to crack. She cradles her head in her hands, the veins in her temples pounding against her fingers._

_Terrako wakes in the background. A series of beeps speaks to either her or Link –– probably her, right? Terrako is hers. Right? Either way, she can’t decipher him._

_“Zelda?” Link asks, but she barely hears through the rushing in her ears. He grabs her hand, squeezes it to steady her. Too bad it’s gone numb._

_And then again: “Zelda!”_

  
  
  


**three and a half weeks after the calamity’s end.**

Link is grabbing her hand. She’s waking up on the far corner of his bed and he’s apparently fascinated by the back of her right hand, because he holds it in both of his. 

Zelda goes from half-lidded to fully conscious in half a second. She sputters, “Wh — what are you — “

“Your hand glows in your sleep,” Link says. Oh. Turns out he was actually, in fact, fascinated by the back of her right hand. 

She’s a little disappointed, given that she knows he _knows_ and given that she doesn’t quite know what to do with her heart now that it’s thawing from a century frozen in time. Does she hand it over now, or does she wait for the next opportunity to hoist the world into a hundred years of darkness? Hard to say.

Link props himself up beside her by the elbows. He crinkles his nose. “Should we see Impa?”

“Why wouldn’t we?”

“I meant,” Link says, “are you _ready_ to see Impa?”

“Oh. Um.” She’s never considered this. In the wet, hot mush of consciousness that was Ganon’s chamber, she forgot and remembered and forgot and remembered Impa so many times that she’s not entirely sure if elderly Impa is real or a product of her imagination. She stays quiet and hopes Link will fill in some blanks.  
And he does. “I thought it might be hard. Since she’s, you know –– “  
“Old?”

He nods with a grimace. “I don’t remember her young. I think it makes her sad. Her granddaughter’s a big fan, though.”

Zelda throws her head back and laughs. She catches Link steal a look at her –– he looks like he’s seen a miracle happen, and she has half a mind to hand over half of that thawing heart now. She imagines her heart to be weirdly-shaped at this point, molded and unmolded and formed and reformed once per year one hundred times over.

She purses her lips to curb a smile instead. “I didn’t realize the Hero of Hyrule was such a heartbreaker.”

“Oh no.” Link flops onto his back and buries his head in his hands like he’s just revealed a grave secret against his will, even though he just gave it away for free. “Impa gives me enough grief.”

“I’m sure,” Zelda grins, “some friend you are, seducing her granddaughter like that.”

Link shoots her a death glare, or as close as Link’s oft-frozen eyes can come to a death glare. She holds it until they both simultaneously, silently agree that it’s too much, and burst out laughing.

  
  
  


**?????.**

_She is having lunch with the Hero. The Hero (of Time? of the Skies? Honestly, she’s not sure, since they all have the same generic face and build.) sits across the booth with an unchanging expression and no idea who she is. His name is a sensation boiling on her tongue that she can’t form into a word._

_The shop is bright inside, bustling with people she does not recognize. Some Zora –– really, a strange amount of Zora for Castle Town, and by that, she means approximately two young Zora women who look over at their table expectantly, one with a small child in tow who clings to her leg –– a handful of Gerudo and Gorons, one Rito, who sneers in the Hero’s direction. Mostly Hylians, though, most of them with their eyes on him as well._

_She is, honestly, not sure what he has done to deserve this crowd of eyes._

_“I appreciate you coming out to meet me,” she says. “I have a few questions. About...you.”_

_She takes a sip of her coffee. She grimaces –– she hates coffee. Why is she drinking coffee?_

_“But first, what would you like to eat?”_

_He blinks. Sweat pools on the back of her neck. Why is she sweating? What is this, anyway? A coffee date? An interview? A recruitment?_

_“Right. I forgot, if I’m to ask you questions, a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer will have to suffice.” She clears her throat. She pulls out a piece of Sheikah tech, a flat slate. The blue of the lights on the machinery coats his face in harsh luminescence._

_“Do you have any memory of this?”_

_He shakes his head._

_“Right.” She drums her fingers on the table. “Well, I’m trying to see which of your lifetimes would be best suited to the upcoming Calamity. It’s a big job. What do you think of the Hero of Time?”_

_He shakes his head._

_“Of the Skies?” That’s also a no. “Of Twilight?” No again. “What about the Hero of the Wild –– “_

_A Hylian, green-haired (green hair, really?) with wide and friendly eyes, drops a check for her coffee off at their table. She reaches for it at the same time he does. But why would he reach for it at all? He didn’t eat anything. Which is out of character. But why does she know that?_

_Their hands knock into one another’s, which the Hero is flustered by, but Zelda is largely unmoved. Until ––_

_“You have this too?” Zelda studies the mark on his right hand. One triangle split into four, the bottom left glowing. Hers, but mirrored. He tilts his head to the side and furrows his brow._

_She’s never found anyone with her marking before. This must mean something. This is how it happens in all of the stories._

_“Do you know what this means? Tell me everything you know, Hero. Please ––”_

  
  
  


**this one actually happens, i swear.**

Link literally calls the court poet “Poet.” Zelda tries her hardest to suppress a giggle when the two meet in person and Link, straight-faced as always, calls him Poet to his face.

To be fair, Zelda has neglected to even learn his name. Once her sourness toward Link expired, she needed a new target of her ire –– which is petty behavior unfitting of the future Queen of Hyrule, sure, but has anyone considered that Zelda is also just a teenage girl?

So it’s with a heavy heart that she puts her book down when Poet approaches her out on the fields, where Zelda sits underneath her favorite tree. Just enough shade to block out the light, just enough ambiance not to block out the world.

“Care for a tale?”

And, well, Zelda may be petty, but she’s not rude. (Although Link would decline from commenting if she asked his opinion on the matter.)

“What’s the tale today?”

“One of my favorites. It’s a tragedy,” Poet says with a glint in his eye. “So in one hundred years, it’ll age like fine wine into comedy, maybe.”

“That’s not how tragedy works.” Zelda would know, because she is quite well-read on the subject of tragedy. “Stories are only called tragedies when the hero dies. You can’t turn one into a comedy. The hero won’t suddenly come alive after one hundred years dead.”

“Ah, Your Highness,” Poet plucks a string on his harp. She hates the harp. The harp is now her least favorite instrument. “Is that really how it happens? That’s an unimaginative view of the art form.”

“What is your definition, then?”

“Comedy,” Poet plucks another string, “is tragedy plus time.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


**a time where wishful thinking was still on the table.**

_“You –– cretin!”_

_Terrako chases Impa into the study, waving a mechanical leg at her as he sputters and turns. Zelda has never seen an animosity quite as deep as Impa and Terrako’s. If he were an animal, he’d be one of those small dogs the women buy for their children in Castle Town, and he would be scraping at Impa’s heels and doing heinous, unsanitary things to the leather of her boots._

_Impa shuts the door before Terrako can fully enter, squishing his leg off in the process._

_“That thing is going to be the death of me,” Impa groans. “That thing is going to break time and space.”_

_“Oh, hush,” Zelda says. She opens the door and picks up the Guardian and the leg, frowning at both of them. Terrako whimpers in her arms._

_“I’m serious! Do you see the way Purah and Robbie look at that thing?”_

_“He’s unique Guardian technology, of course they’re interested.”_

_“Sure, sure,” Impa waves her hand in Zelda’s direction. “When the world collapses in on itself, we’ll see who’s right.” (It was Impa.)_

_Terrako whines as Zelda holds him still to reattach the leg. She remembers how, but only vaguely, since he’s never quite broken like this before. Her mother did it once in front of her. She should remember how to do it. Granted she was five, but still._

_She fiddles with the leg and it’s not quite perfect, Terrako will probably limp until fate clicks the screw into a better position, but it’s fine for now. Fine for now, will maybe be a problem later –– she knows how that goes._

_They sit in easy silence, Zelda recording the results of the afternoon’s experiment regarding the nature and strength of Guardian lasers (strong enough to pierce through metal shields, Link learned the hard way on her behalf.) in her notebook and Impa keeping too close a watch on her, until Impa says:_

_“By the way, may I speak out of turn, Princess?”_

_“Yes, Impa.”_

_“If you and him are going to be_ like that _, at least have a better poker face.”_

_“We’re — we’re not like anything!” Zelda hides her face in her notebook. “He barely speaks to me.”_

_“Mhm, that shriek was very convincing.” Impa says. “And he_ never _speaks to me, so clearly you’re special.”_

_She throws her pencil at Impa. Impa giggles as she catches it in midair, Sheikah warrior and all. Zelda sighs. “Even if we were, there’s no use in it. If we survive this, in a few years Father will find some suitors of noble birth, and that will be the end of it.”_

_“That’s a depressing life.” Impa sighs. “Is that really how it’s gonna happen, Princess Zelda?”_

_She chews the inside of her cheek. Impa’s words feel ominous. “I hope not.”_

_“Look,” Impa levels with her. “As much of a recipe for disaster as it is, no one pulls a sword out of a stone for someone they_ don’t _run off into the sunset with. Just be careful, okay? People will talk. I worry.”_

_A sword out of a stone? But he didn’t — it wasn’t for her — she had nothing to do with him and the Master Sword —_

_Did she?_

_“Hasn’t he had the sword since he was twelve?”_

_Impa looks at her like Zelda has just told her that water is not, in fact, wet. “Princess, he rescued it last week –– “_

_–– the pencil in Zelda’s right hand snaps in half. Gold light glows from the back of her hand, four triangles to form the one ––_

_“ –– you were there.”_

  
  
  


**one month after the calamity’s end.**

Impa’s still got her wits about her. Everything and nothing about her has changed, once Zelda’s most trusted friend alongside Link, whip-smart and quick both in mind and body. The mind is still sharp; the body may be different, but is replicated almost identically in Paya. So, good enough.

She naps in Paya’s bed in the afternoon. Despite her best efforts, the trip on horseback wears her down. She wakes to find Impa alone in her sitting room.

“Link’s gone with Paya to run an errand in town,” Impa says as if she’s expecting the question. “The general store gives him a Hero’s Discount — ridiculous.”

“It certainly is.” Zelda laughs at that. “Link says Paya’s really taken to him.”

“And yet that is completely wasted on him,” Impa clicks her tongue. “A shame. I’ve heard blondes are more his type.”

“Will you –– “ If this were a hundred years ago, she would have shoved at Impa’s shoulder. She settles for putting her head in her hands, elbows on the table, and groaning. “That’s not what I meant! I think it’s nice that they’re friends.”

“Sure, sure,” Impa says. “All I’m saying is, there’s no crown to restrain you. Find happiness where you can, dear.”

She bites her lip. Some Princess of Hyrule she is, that she’s put such little thought into the restructuring of the world. The most she’s managed to sort out is that there is, in fact, a world in need of restructuring.

“But isn’t the goal to rebuild Hyrule enough to eventually have a crown?” Zelda rests her chin on her hand. “Though I must admit, I’m not sure where a monarch even fits into Hyrule as it stands.”

“Have you met with any of its leaders?”

Zelda shakes her head. “We’re visiting the Zora for the Champion’s Festival, and because Vah Ruta is giving troubling readings. Then I was thinking of visiting the Gerudo. But I’m sure any Rito or Goron connections I once had have dried up, so I’m leaving those two up to Link to arrange.”

Somehow she knows that the Rito don’t believe that the Champion is alive, will insist that Zelda is the Princess’s heir. Somehow she remembers another with Daruk’s Protection. Somehow ––

–– she’s not sure how she knows this.

“Do you remember any of Purah and Robbie’s work with the Guardians?”

“Vaguely,” Impa says. “Purah’s up the hill in Hateno, if you’d like to hear from the source.”

“Do you remember my mother having a particular interest in it?” Zelda chews the inside of her cheek. “I had a dream, where my mother and I constructed a small Guardian. Egg shaped, fully cognizant. Purah had no memory of it.”

“Now that you mention it,” Impa frowns. “There was this annoying robotic _thing_ that used to follow me around the castle. I think your father confiscated it, but it would always find its way out of storage to pester me.”

“I doubt it was specifically looking to pester you, Impa,” Zelda says, strangely and unexpectedly defensive of the little Guardian. “Perhaps it was looking for me?”

“Perhaps your dreams are just that? Dreams?” Impa asks. “Maybe your time sealed away has left you feeling rattled.”

“No,” Zelda’s frustration builds. Her voice is louder, more forceful than she expects. “There has to be something there. This Guardian is in almost all of them. And in almost all of them someone will turn to me and ask if I’m remembering correctly. _Everyone_. The Goddess Hylia, you, my mother, Link ––”

“What about me?”

Link and Paya stand in the doorway, bags of vegetables and freshly-cut meat hanging from their shoulders.

“She’s been dreaming about you,” Impa says, but so sardonically that it sounds like a joke. 

Link looks to Zelda, a question in his eyes, but he moves on to more important matters, which is, of course, dinner.

  
  


**???????????.**

_“Why are we doing this again?”_

_Zelda bolts ahead, and Link practically has to jog behind her to catch up._

_“Because,” Zelda says, eyes on the carriage behind the courtyard fountain waiting for her. “If my father doesn’t think I’m otherwise betrothed, he’ll just talk me into ‘upholding the family name’ with someone else.”_

_“That sounds...contrived.” Link stops walking, which means she needs to stop walking to keep conversation with him. Annoying. “And what’s wrong with Paris?”_

_Zelda scoffs. “It’s not what’s wrong with him, it’s –– “_

_She stops. She’s made it to the fountain, so she sits along its ledge. Link does not join her. Good. She doesn’t want him to. She lifts her dress slightly to avoid the puddles forming around the fountains. ‘Two houses, both alike in dignity’ or whatever, but the Hero’s family home sure does have shitty plumbing._

_“I’m sure he’s fine.” Zelda frowns at the hem of her dress. It’s collected some water. “But I can’t finish my research here. I want out of here, and you do too. So, we get the Friar to forge a marriage certificate, and we’ll leave Castle Town. I’ll make for the ancient lab, and you’ll...I don’t know, stop being a fancy knight and tend to cuccos in the wild, or whatever it is you’d like to do.”_

_“Wow,” Link snorts. “You broke me down to my essentials.”_

_Zelda doesn’t reward him with so much as a glance. She leans forward to rest her elbows on her knees, head in her hands. Her tiara pinches at her forehead, and the glove on her right hand is unbearably itchy. She’s stuck, yet again. It’s not enough to be a princess with an impossible destiny. It’s not enough that she’s fended off thousands of generations of evil. In every world she will be burdened with something so unbelievably_ stupid _that a marriage to a perfectly nice but perfectly boring count standing in her way this time feels like the Goddess is mocking her._

_Link must notice a change in her. He sighs as well and sits next to her. “Okay, sure.”_

_“Really?” Zelda looks up at him, his eyes boring into hers, bright and blue. He’s –– well, she could have certainly done worse in terms of fake husbands. “Okay. This is how it’ll happen: Impa should be outside the castle grounds, and she’ll show you to the secret entrance to the gardens.”_

_“Impa’s in on this?”_

_“She thinks it’s an awful idea,” Zelda barks out a grim laugh. “She says I’ll be ‘wedded to calamity before this is all over.’” Link considers this silently. She continues: “My balcony is above the gardens. Just yell up to me loudly, wax poetic about my beauty, whatever you need to do to get mine and my father’s attention. Okay?”_

_Link stands and offers her a hand. The peculiar mark (one triangle, divided into four) on his hand glows as he helps her up as says, “I don’t really wax poetic, Zelda.”_

_“I believe in you. You’ll find a way.”_

_And because it would really sell the entire thing if the attendees still shuffling out of the party were tittering about two star-crossed idiots from opposite houses fraternizing, she leans in to kiss his cheek._

_Except her heart is monumentally stupid and weirdly-shaped after its thousands of reincarnations, and it flutters as she takes one last look at him through the carriage door._

  
  


**one month after the calamity’s end, continuous.**

Zelda ruins dinner. 

Which is to say, she offers to chop the vegetables, and her hands forget what to do, and she slices her index finger open.

Link chews on his cheek as he bandages her in the sitting room. He runs his thumb on the back of her hand, the golden outline fading more by the day.

“Hm,” is all he says.

Impa leans over the both of them. “The Triforce symbol. Interesting,” she says, but does not elaborate.

“It’s getting fainter,” Zelda offers. She’s very tired of them speaking in tongues about the mark on her hand. “I’m not sure what that means, other than my power waning.”

“I’d guess that it only manifests as needed,” Impa answers. “So take that as a job well done, dear.” 

She leaves to tend to dinner before Zelda can tell her that actually, it glows every night.

In Impa’s absence, Link takes her hand properly. Zelda winces as the wound stretches, but she won’t resist the chance to lace her fingers with his. He’s lost in thought about something; his eyes are calm waters as his other hand traces the mark, but the furrow in his brow gives him away.

“Have you been having bad dreams?” Link finally asks.

That’s not the question she expects. It’s also not the question that he’s asking. _‘Why were you dreaming of me?’_ ‘Were _you dreaming of me, or was Impa being Impa?’ ‘The legends said you love me and I’m too shy to ask that one, but…?’_

“What makes you assume that they’re bad?” is the answer she decides on.

They’re not bad dreams. They’re not bad, and that’s the problem. In her dreams Revali picks at Link and Daruk laughs about it. In her dreams Impa fondly calls her a lovesick fool. In her dreams she _is_ a lovesick fool, but a fool with a kingdom and a knight who seals the darkness but waits for her to pin his uniform into place. Her dreams are fine –– sometimes they’re nice, sometimes even wonderful.

But all those dreams are wrong. They’re a fairytale happiness. She walked out of that story the moment she stuck the sword back in the stone and walked into Hyrule Castle with nothing but her glowing hand and the power of love.

And it’s all because she couldn’t shut up and believe in love a little sooner.

Link doesn’t answer. His eyes are still on her hands.

“Sorry for ruining dinner,” she says suddenly, stupidly. Link tears his gaze away from her hand to look at her. 

“I ruined dinner,” she repeats. “I said I would help and I made everything worse. I’ve just burdened Impa even more.”

Link nods like he’s putting together a riddle. “You didn’t ruin dinner.”

“I bled all over the carrots.”

“Extra seasoning.”

“Gross.” That gets Zelda laughing, small and subdued. “And unsanitary, Link. How did you not die of food poisoning out in the wild?”

“Sheer force of will,” he smirks. He looks at their hands again like he’s mulling something over. 

“You don’t have to pretend I didn’t —“

“Ruin dinner?” 

“ _Link_.” She rolls her eyes. She’s serious now. “Sometimes I try and imagine what it would have been like if — sometimes, I see a whole fantasy world play out where I figure out a way to get us all out of it — “ Zelda balls her free hand into a fist. “Like, I turn back time and I un-turn it — this doesn’t make any sense — I don’t know what else to say. I’m sorry.” And she repeats again: “I ruined dinner.”

Link frowns. Then he moves her hand closer to his face. Zelda’s breath hitches.

Link traces the bandage, says, “it doesn’t look too bad,” and then he drops the facade of inspecting the wound. He slowly lifts her the back of her hand to his mouth but doesn’t move his lips, like he’s wagering that this is the most casual and platonic way possible for one to to kiss the hand of the princess you’re sworn to protect. 

She smiles back at him once she’s worked through the shock. She won’t goad him any further; wants to see how far Link is willing to play things out on his own.

She hears a “Hmph!” from the other side of the room, then a loud gasp. In every reality, Impa’s bloodline finds a way to interfere.

“Um –– “ Paya loudly clears her throat. Zelda practically sees steam coming from her ears. “Grandmother wanted me to tell you –– uh –– it’s time for dinner!”

Link lets go of her hand. Zelda frowns. Paya notices her disappointment and squeaks again.

“See?” Link says. “Dinner goes on, carrots or no carrots.”

There’s a riddle in there somewhere that Zelda does not care to solve. 

  
  
  


**mid-calamity.**

_Zelda’s head rests on Link’s shoulder, an awkward angle that has her hunch over slightly, but comfortable enough._

_Terrako is playing a melody from the corner of the Great Hall, and she and her friends gather to celebrate her awakening – and her birthday, though in light of the day’s events, that feels the least important. At some point, dinner morphed into talking and laughing, and the talking morphed into Impa bullying Terrako into playing through his entire music repertory._

_Zelda doesn’t let go of Link the entire party. It feels greedy, but he doesn’t relent or complain; they almost lost one another twice over that day, after all._

_Once it’s gotten late, he takes her hand and walks her back to her quarters. He treats her to a smile as he drops her off by the door outside her room like every night. The smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes._

_“Good night, Link.” She steps back from him, but keeps their fingers entwined. “By the way, I enjoyed the fruitcake. If you weren’t chosen by the sword, you’d have a bright culinary career ahead of you.”_

_Link chuckles at that. Waves her goodnight._

_But then a Link that is not_ her _Link replaces the one in front of her. And there’s a Zelda, watching herself in the third person. He’s wearing his Champion’s tunic instead of armor, he’s walking with her to her study, he’s laughing with her. He’s telling a joke about using the Master Sword to cut her hair, which is down to her shoulders. She’s rolling her eyes at him, but it’s fond._

_She grabs the real Link’s shoulder._

_“Why won’t you say anything to me?”_

_He looks confused. Why does he always look confused when she speaks to him? There’s pressure building in her chest and an itch behind her forehead as she tries to find the puzzle piece that doesn’t fit, the wavelength they’re not connecting on._

_“You –– I don’t expect much from you,” Zelda says. Then she amends: “Not in the way of words, I mean. I expect a lot from you otherwise, because I know ––” She blinks up at him. His face reveals nothing. There’s no emotion she can decipher in his eyes. “I saw you –– I saw you_ die, _for real this time –– “ Not even then. His face doesn’t move. “You answered me before –– remember –– we were friends, weren’t we? You spoke to me before –– why won’t you now?”_

_Link opens his mouth. No sound comes out._

_“Please,” she begs to a brick wall. “Say something.” And then she starts saying things she’d never feel dignified after saying in the light of day, including but not limited to: “Please, Link. You’re my best friend. You’re my sword. I need you to help me. If you won’t help me, who will?”_

_And then: “You’re my only friend. Everyone else died a hundred years –– “_

_There it is. That’s the piece that doesn’t fit._

_It’s Zelda’s turn to tell Link: “This – this isn’t how it happens.”_

_Link doesn’t answer. Link never answers because Link is a beautiful brick wall._

**Author's Note:**

> *twirls hair* hiiii zelda fandom… talk to me about zelda at @rushvalleys on twitter and curiouscat and @mercymorns on tumblr…...no but really. this is my first loz fic and botw is my first loz game so idk what i’m doing here yet.
> 
> some notes, bc brevity is clearly not my strong suit:  
> • the title is from good ol’ r&j, except modernized bc i’m pretentious but not pretentious enough to have “thou art” in my fic title, also why i felt like throwing in a fake dating au that inexplicably takes place during r&j…..anyway romeo and juliet is We Live in a Society: The Play The Musical The Fanfic that is way more about the act of adults repressing their kids than the romance so . maybe fitting? idk. i just wanted to incorporate Different Types of Tragedy and didn't want to make my gf who beta-ed this who is not remotely into shakespeare sit through another elaborate hamlet au. which i did consider . so  
> • like i said a lot of the structure here is inspired by harrow the ninth by tamsyn muir, but as time went on it got less harrow-inspired and more “what if zelda was cassandra in a fucked up anachronistic greek tragedy” and i got considerably derailed despite not really reaching that goal. also i reread agamemnon for this and it definitely was not worth the effort but anyway if you’re here i’m assuming you like knight/princess dynamics and fucked up coffeeshop aus, so read the locked tomb trilogy  
> • sorry for being a theatre kid i promise i am not as annoying as this fic makes me appear


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